Episode 2.7
"Tell Abby and Connor to stay out of trouble!"- the last words of Stephan Hart Synopsis As Helen Cutter plans to alter the future and Oliver Leek's collection of creatures escapes, one of the team will die... Plot Oliver Leek has control of dozens of creatures from the past and future in a Creature Prison. The team are also imprisoned: Cutter and Jenny in one cell, Abby and Connor in another. Cutter deduces that Helen is in charge, since Leek 'doesn't have the wit to do this', and that whatever Leek is planning, Helen will have her own agenda. Meanwhile, Leek, who also has Caroline captive, places her in Abby and Connor's cell, taunting Connor with the knowledge she was paid to go out with him. Leek compares Connor to himself, calling them 'the losers, the nerds, the uncool'; a claim Connor rebuffs. Abby and Caroline swiftly get into a brutal fist fight, which Leek refuses to intervene in, on the excuse it's too entertaining, and Connor's efforts to break it up earn him a punch in the face for his troubles. Back at the ARC, with the team missing, Lester is forced to call for Stephen's help in capturing a Giant Scorpion that Leek has released onto a popular holiday beach and has started killing people. Though distrustful of Lester, Stephen agrees to help, on the condition he does it alone. When Stephen arrives, the beach is deserted. He manages to lure the Scorpion to the surface, then uses a harpoon gun to tether the creature to the pier until Lester's soldiers can arrive to take it back to the ARC. In the cells, Jenny tells Cutter that she broke up with her fiance due to the stress of the job, while Caroline apologises to Connor and Abby. Meanwhile, Cutter admits to Jenny he still has feelings for Helen when she asks him: a revelation that causes Helen to release him from the cells. She explains that Claudia Brown's transformation into Jenny Lewis was an accident, but she wishes to replicate the accident as a scientific experiment to see the effects of altering time through the anomalies, in order to prove her hypothesis the anomalies appeared to help humanity create its own future. Meanwhile, in a conference between Leek and Lester, in which Leek reveals that like the scorpion, he has 12 more creatures ready to be released across the country, Cutter realises the reasons for Leek and Helen's alliance: she is helping him to gain power and influence through her knowldge of the creatures and anomalies, whilst he in turn is helping her to perform her experiments to change time by giving her a base of operations. Leek then proceeds to torture Cutter by locking Jenny, Abby, Connor and Caroline in a sealed room and releasing a Smilodon to attack them. When Leek ignores Cutter's pleads, he desperately turns to Helen to back him up: however, Leek also ignores her demands. In desperation, Cutter damages Leek's computer system: when he re-boots it, the virus implanted into the system by Connor beforehand wipes out the system, freeing the group from their captivity and unleashing the caged creatures. In the confusion, the rest of the team, along with Rex and Caroline, make good their escape and alert Lester of the whereabouts of the base. Leek flees deeper into the base, while Helen helps Cutter escape from the guards. She offers her help, but he refuses; instead, he turns a gun on her and insists she lead him out of the base, upon which she will be handed over to Lester. Helen rebuffs this, saying she knows Nick still has feelings for her, but he retorts what he said in the cells was an act designed to get her attention and his release. However, when they are jumped by guards, she escapes and locks herself in a cupboard to protect herself from the creatures now rampaging through the base. Once secure, she secretly calls Stephen and tells him that Lester has killed the team and is becoming too powerful. She asks him to rescue her and he heads for the base, unaware he has been deceived again. Meanwhile, Nick makes his way through the base, stalked by a Future Predator Leek has sent to kill him. Cutter reaches the feeding chamber with the creature in pursuit. He distracts it with blood from a cut on his hand, then tears out the neural clamp attached to its skull, killing the predator from the resulting brain damage. Leek re-appears and reveals he has control of an entire pack of future predators, which he will use as a Praetorian Guard to make himself invincible, ignoring Cutter's comments that the predators will likely destroy mankind if they ever escape their captivity. At that point, Lester makes contact, informing Leek his soldiers have quarantined the 12 creatures he had planned to release, and are about to assault the base. Furious, Leek tries to engineer a hostage situation, ordering Lester to call off the soldiers or he will order the predators to kill Cutter. Lester refuses; before Leek can go through with his threat, Cutter deactivates the neural clamps by inserting one in a circuit box. The electrical charge short-circuits the device, deactivating them all and freeing the predators from Leek's control. Cutter narrowly makes his escape as the future predators descend en masse and devour Leek, watched by a dispassionate Lester and the disgusted staff of the ARC. When Stephen arrives at the base, he rescues Helen and insists they confront Lester, disregarding her suggestion of escape. However, while moving through the base's corridors, he sees Cutter and realises that Helen was lying. Furious with the pair of them (Helen for lying to him, and Cutter for being right about Helen), Cutter convinces him and Helen to help contain the creatures, lest they escape and wipe out mankind, starting with the three of them. Helen suggests a plan to lure the creatures into the feeding chamber by sounding an alarm they associate with food, before locking them in where they can destroy each other. However, in the chamber, an attacking Deinonychus destroys the external door controls in an attempt to get Helen. As the dinosaur tries to drag her back, Stephen kills it, but when Nick tries to shut the door, he is unable to. Helen explains that now they are only able to lock the chamber from the inside, requiring the sacrifice of one of them to do so. Nick prepares to go back, but before he can, Stephen knocks him to the ground and seals himself in, ignoring Cutter's desperate pleas to open the door. Nick and Helen can only watch in horror as Stephen is surrounded and killed by the creatures, who then turn on each other. As Nick mourns the death of his student and friend, Helen makes her escape. At Stephen's funeral, all the team, along with many of the ARC's staff, even Lester, turn out. Caroline makes her peace with Connor and Abby and offers to try again, though it seems doubtful Connor will respond. Jenny offers to go for a drink with Cutter: he refuses for the time being, but implies he'd enjoy doing so. Lester appears and says that there is another anomaly, apologising for the untimely interruption. As the team leaves, Cutter hangs back and pulls out a photo of himself and Claudia Brown. Accepting that the changes to time are permenant and he has lost her forever, he tears up the photo and throws the pieces away, before catching up with the team to go and deal with the anomaly. Once everyone has left, Helen visits Stephen's memorial, placing a fossil ammonite on the grave. She tells Stephen to be patient, promising him that the future can change. Suddenly several clones of the mysterious cleaner dressed in SAS uniform surround her, waiting for orders. Helen surveys her troops and gives a knowing, evil smile... Cast * Nick Cutter — Douglas Henshall * Abby Maitland — Hannah Spearritt * Stephen Hart — James Murray (Dies) * Connor Temple — Andrew-Lee Potts * Jenny Lewis — Lucy Brown * Helen Cutter — Juliet Aubrey * James Lester — Ben Miller * Oliver Leek — Karl Theobald (Dies) * Caroline Steel — Naomi Bentley (Last appearence) Continuity * Future Predators, Mer Creatures, Smilodon, a Giant Scorpion, a pair of Deinonychus, Scutosaurus and an Arthropleura all return in this episode. When the Scutosaurus tramples over two guards, the wilhem scream can be heard. Errors * When Cutter had the flashback to when Connor installed the virus they didn't know that Leek had been the one who hacked in so the flashback is wrong Episode 2.6 Trivia * This is the only episode to date not to have an anomaly appear in it External link 2.7, Episode